The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for information technology asset type identification using a mobile, vision-enabled robot.
With the increasing miniaturization of information technology (IT) equipment, data centers and large organizations today contain more IT assets, e.g., storage systems, computing devices, communications equipment, and the like, than ever before. Large data centers, for example, may house hundreds of thousands of physical IT assets. A common problem in data centers and large organizations is keeping track of the exact locations of all of these IT assets.
One solution for keeping track of the location of IT assets in data centers and large organizations is to use passive or active radio frequency identifier (RFID) tags on the IT assets and then manually scan the RFID tags with RFID readers. However, with this solution, all IT assets need to have their own associated RFID tag and the tags must be manually read by a corresponding RFID reader. This leads to significant labor and material costs associated with these operations. In addition, manual scanning and tracking of IT assets is error-prone due to the influence of human error, and the location information gathered through manual means can frequently become out of date with respect to the actual current IT asset location.